A number of display processor systems are known in the art as set forth below.
An interactive terminal-host data processing system is described in a paper by M. Maurer entitled "Full screen testing of interactive applications", IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1983, PP246-261.
An interactive data processing system is also described in the IBM Manual "Interactive System Productivity Facility", Publication No. GC34-2181-0, Oct. 1984.
The interactive system productivity facility/program development facility (ISPF/PDF) described in the cited two publications provides dialog management services in host computer environments to users of display terminals. Dialog management services may be used by an application developer to produce interactive applications in the form of menu-driven dialogs and dialog functions to make the application easy to use by a non-experienced user.
ISPF/PDF is a dialog application that provides application development services to both experienced and non-experienced professional people. It is used to create and maintain both source programs and text data. ISPF/PDF provides interfaces to many system facilities via easy to use menus, relieving the users of the need to know the specific command syntax of the interactive system they are using.
The ISPF/PDF facility provides an interface between a user terminal and a host data base including a display panel library and a data table library. The ISPF/PDF facility makes the panel and data libraries transparent to the end-user at the terminal. Some of the panels in the panel library, selection panels, are available for the terminal operator as selection menus, whereas other panels are functioning as data entry panels, for data access between the terminal and the data tables in the data base.
Whereas ISPF/PDF facility extensively improves the interactive data flow between the operator at the terminal and his data base in the host system, there is still a need for improvements providing a still better service for the terminal operator. Some times, for instance; the operator has to handle a large amount of display panel lay-outs which frequently must be changed and such a housekeeping work might be for certain applications cumbersome and time-consuming.